John Chambers Keynote at Oracle OpenWorld

Had the opportunity today to see and hear John Chambers at Oracle OpenWorld (recording and presentation available here - may need to scroll down a bit). It was great to hear him talk about Unified Communications / Telepresence and how that will impact business users and consumers.

This is the first time I had the opportunity to hear John Chambers live and I must say that he is a phenomenal speaker, engages his audience very very well and very inspiring. Even though he did raise a bunch of questions around how communications would change with Telepresence, Unified Communications...what I found fascinating was his concept around Enteprise 2.0 - which is Web 2.0 coming into the business world. This is simply great - as it goes beyond blurring functional department boundaries in enterprises to actually blurring the lines between a consumer and business user. This can have a great impact on adoption of tools, especially communication / collaboration tools, and also how these products are marketed and sold.

I am tempted to believe that consumer adoption of Web 2.0 collaboration/communication tools will fuel enterprise adoption as well...as I see the analogy of this in the IM world and how Enterprise IM never took off and got to the level of usage of business users using consumer IM products in their business.

Even though the presentation and demonstrations around the use of Telepresence, etc. in consumer markets was compelling - the skeptic in me wonders....if the consumer products reach a level of quality and reliability that is "good enough", will the costly Telepresence and UC systems see the fate similar to video conferencing systems, i.e. lie around in corners of large enterprises with no real usage?

Sony Mylo - concept seems to be cool

Has anyone tried the Sony Mylo? A phone that is not a phone...as it connects to the IP-network. The concept is pretty cool. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/technology/19pogue.html?ref=technology

Are we seeing the signs already....that only the Internet and IP-Networks will survive.

Real Time Communication / Collaboration: Coming Closer to Real-Collaboration

http://melra.com/2006/10/09/coming-closer-to-realcollaboration.aspx

Coming Closer to Real-Collaboration

Despite significant advances in peripheral devices like webcams and audio head-sets, real-time collaboration is not close to being real. It's not entirely surprising - the bar is still quite high in terms of what the user is expected to do in order to have a good audio/video conversation. There are many issues beyond the user's primary control - bandwidth, network latency, incompatible or insufficient system setups, poorly designed and expensive devices, background noise etc.

Apple has figured out one solution using its iChat software. Offer a full featured audio and video experience only if ALL participants in the conference meet ALL the requirements. For starters, everyone needs to have at least a G3 Mac! If participating in video, everyone needs to have an iSight camera (most Macs now have it built in). Take a look at the requirements below. Of-course it will work! Given that Apple's core clientele (albeit very small) is comprised of high end consumers who demand the best, this high bar of setup requirements is not much of a problem and works for them.


HP has recently introduced a new tool called 'Halo' which is considered a breakthrough in virtual conferencing. This new tool allows remote teams to "meet" in a half-virtual, half-physical room. Developed by special-effects wizards at DreamWorks Animation SKG (the studio behind Shrek) and HP, the Halo "studios" are used by Pepsico, Procter & Gamble, and Novartis, among others. The eerily realistic system allows for more frequent collaborations, reduces travel costs, and increases productivity.


But is there a tool for the masses? I think that one that does stand out (in current and relative terms) is Macromedia Breeze. Macromedia (now Adobe) has done a wonderful job of integrating the various conferencing ‘channels’ – audio, video, presentations, polling, text chat, white-boarding, attendee management, meeting recording etc. Breeze also takes care of audio mixing. I’d highly recommend everyone to try out this application. On the consumer end, both Yahoo! and MSN have brought high-quality audio-video communication to the masses. Their recent interop announcement bridges two huge networks at the text-messaging level.

I hope to see the following trends in the near future that will help lower the bar on RTC.

- PC companies will take a cue from Apple and do tighter device integration with their hardware.
- Broadband adoption will continue to rise. This will make bandwidth a non-issue.
- New RTC related standards (like the DOD’s ISWG) will emerge that will compel vendors to interop at some level. It may start with messaging and will work its way up.

PC Magazine review of Video Chat tools

Recently, someone forward this article on PC Magazine on real-world testing of the various video chat tools. I am amazed by the quality of testing (or lack there of) done by this publisher. This was such a marketing baloney - that it was not even funny! It further bolsters my belief that these casual video chat tools have yet to evolve to deliver to the real-time video experience.

I tried their best rated tool - SightSpeed...and in my humble opinion it SUCKED!! While reading through the PCMag article the following caught my attention: "SightSpeed worked pretty well, though we saw several "network congestion" errors, and dropped frames were fairly common, too. That's Comcast's service, however, not SightSpeed. " Now...now....since when does a reviewer make excuses for the tool and point the finger to someone else for not being able to deliver a high quality experience. Shouldn't SightSpeed be able to adapt to the changing network conditions? It is always easy to blame the ISP or Internet in general for providing a degraded quality of experience.

This theme seemed to follow everywhere in the review. For Skype it mentions "the quality of the video wasn't ideal, and there was some lag time in the transmission of the video signal, but this is to be expected when calling overseas, where broadband quality and Internet connections can be spotty."

I expect better from reviewers!